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Brushing
Posted by MightyMoe on August 5, 2019 at 9:36 pmIt took a few hours, but I finally got line cleared.
jitterboogie replied 4 years, 8 months ago 13 Members · 12 Replies- 12 Replies
Nice work! Looks like Taz did it.
MHReminds me of a time we had couple crews clearing line, my crew ended up in the right place. The other crew (going the other direction) sailed off line after about 300?? and continued for maybe another 300?? , if they hadn??t come to the fence who knows where they might have ended up. ???? ????, needless to say the crew was very upset with the PC. All of this was by hand.
Back in the summer of ’85, we were staking centerline for a future high tension line going through the Oneonta, NY area. We were the “B” crew from the satellite office in western Massachusetts, working way out of our normal patch, under the direction of the “A” crew out of Albany. They were pretty full of themselves, but that turned out to be short lived. Both the chief and I-man on the A crew had HP 41’s to do all their calc work with, but I had just bought the cats a**, a brand new HP 71B, with the survey module. This one morning, bright and early, I’d been directed the night before by Mr. A-Crew PC to meet up with them “on their line”, to get more instructions on our next assignment, having finished up “our line” a bit early. This was pretty thick, raw land, heavily forested and swampy on occasion. So, I’m following their line in from the last road, and after about 1200′, I come to a fork in the line. Oops! Power lines don’t have forks. I go to the right for about 1500′ ’til it dead ends. Big Oops. I go back to the fork, take the left line, and about 1000′ in I find ’em. “What happened guys?” “Uhh, we each made the same mistake on our 41’s”. Something about reducing a bearing wrong. I don’t know what really happened, but I do know those boys sure did know how to party when they were out of town! I think that might have had something to do with it. We shared 3 large projects with them over the years, a 10,000 acre boundary in Maine, and two powerlines in NY, and we out produced them every time. I guess we were like that car rental company: When you’re second best, you just try harder!
I don’t have many photos of cleared line these days. I do have this one. We had the “pleasure” of staking points for the dozer to aim for. It was way easier walking when he got done with the place!
I was just about to post a question concerning cutting line and the equipment used. What kind of equipment do you use for line clearing? We have a small shop (My son and I) so we just use machetes, a chainsaw, and sometimes a weedeater with a brush blade. Is there really any benefit in using the pre-formulated “Tru Fuel” over simply mixing the 2 cycle oil in the standard octane gasoline?
I don’t use engineered fuel/TruFuel when I know I’m going to be using chainsaw (or anything else) for a big job, or for many days or every few days, but I do use it like towards the end of season (don’t chainsaw in the deep of winter and don’t snowblow in summer.. :-)…) that kind of stuff. I use it in my generator all the time because thats one machine that I really need to start when I need it. Just three weeks ago in big blow down here, our power went out so I pulled out the generator (hadn’t been run in 2 1/2 years) and it fired on the first pull and ran on the 2nd! It had TruFuel in it. If you’re using chainsaw on daily or weekly basis, mixed standard gas (and no ethanol!) is fine… and I don’t short myself on the 2 cycle oil… always use the brand recommended by the manufacturer.
‘Trufuel’, I tried it and decided it did not save me any time, I did not like the container and went back to mixing my own with Sthil mix in an old steel 1-gallon Coleman white fuel can (the same one I have been using for 30 years.)
However, I want to extol the virtue of two things:
1. Driving an extra few miles to get the higher octane, no-ethanol gas from Craig’s Service Center. It is worth the extra couple bucks per gallon.
2. Not allowing any rain to accumulate on the top of the can, presenting the possibility of water getting into the mix.
I have tried running everything with a motor on a gas-water mix over the years. No success yet.
My saws all start on the first pull and they run until I turn off the switch. I attribute this to good gas management procedures.
My former job involved a lot of hydraulic surveys. Getting sections through the scrub was a bit of work at times. You had to be ready to swim or chop, occasionally both at the same time.
I ditched the long blade ontario and went with a shorter saw-back gerber machete. The steel was light and a touch on the soft side, but it cut anything under 2 inches in one reasonable swing. The saw was great if you only needed it a few times a day.
On the mountain roads, trails and lines a chainsaw is a must. I don’t need it often, but when I do it has to work. I run trufuel exclusively, and my saw fires up every time. I also buy modern equipment that runs ethanol without problems. ‘Real’ gas is too hard to find and too expensive. I haven’t had a fuel related problem in any of my vehicles or tools in over a decade.
Sandvik/Swedish Clearing Axe
http://www.leevalley.com/en/garden/page.aspx?p=10246
What we typically would use clearing line in northern Ontario. Large trees were felled with a chainsaw, but it was usually too much of a hassle. Most scrub would fall to it so you, usually, just made line “work” with what it could cut.
>”I also buy modern equipment that runs ethanol without problems.”
I’m told there is a cranky old guy who runs a business locally where you can get a mower or chain saw repaired. He has a chemical test that he applies, and if your engine has run on ethanol he throws you and the saw out of the place.
.I was working a job along the Rio Grande cutting line for the DOI and surveying the pins for the river ROW. Used all sorts of fun things but the one tool other than the canoe and paddles that mattered was this one:
Basically a super high powered circular saw that can buzz through 5in trees and everything else. Including your foot or leg or the guy next to you.
I’ll try to find the photos of the 2700′ long by 3’wide tunnel we carved out of the salt cedar and russian olives. Highlight of the survery was coming face to face with an Oryx, about 25 yards away when He poked his 4 ft horns and head out of the dense brush to see what the hell we were doing.
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